Wednesday, January 30, 2008

What's in a Name? (Music Venue Edition)

The outdoor music venue in Fair Park (the big one, not the band shell) started out its life as Coca Cola Starplex, and then just Starplex. After that, it became Smirnoff Music Centre (except for rare occasions when they booked some sort of teenybopper concert where the majority of the audience was under 21, and then it would revert to Starplex again. I'm not sure how long that agreement was in place.) And now, it's changing its name again: It's going to be known as Superpages.com center.

Rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it?

As the article points out, there are other local venues with long, awkward-sounding names, and they usually have some sort of nickname: The American Airlines Center (The AAC). The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center (The Meyerson, or--much less commonly--The Mort.) So what will people call this one?

I know what I'll probably call it: The Place I Haven't Been To In Nearly A Decade Because It's Too Expensive And There's Rarely A Concert I'm Interested In Seeing There Anymore. (TPIHBTINADBITEATRACIIISTA, for short.) But seriously, I haven't been there much since my heavy-metal days, though I'll always be grateful for the daylong jazz festival held there that turned out to be the only time I ever got to see Miles Davis live. I also have fond memories of Steely Dan and Harry Connick, Jr. concerts there, but there hasn't been much that's been up my alley lately.

(I just posted the above paragraph on the DMN's Playlist music blog, where they're soliciting nicknames for the place.)

So what would you call the place, if you called it anything at all? And, for the locals, what was the last concert you saw there?

Politics and entertaInment, part 1: A Vermont state legislator has an interesting day job: He's a stand-up comic. (Ironically, there are no comedy clubs in Vermont.)

Politics and entertainment, part 2: The son of Kansas' governor has created a new video game for a college class project. (The game's title is a groaner; it's a prison-themed effort called "Don't Drop the Soap." Ouch.)

5 comments:

The Merge! I remember them; they were soliciting DJ's from the general public for a while. I sent them some of my KNTU stuff in the hopes of doing some occasional voiceovers. They actually offered me a weekend DJ shift, but--with six out of seven days packed full at the time, I couldn't fit it in.

Ha! It's not that I ever played heavy metal, mind you (unless you count the fact that saxophones are heavy, and made of metal), but I've been to my share of NIN and Pantera concerts, believe it or not.